Aida was so shocked he couldn’t speak for a long time. The expressions of the two trusted disciples behind him were even worse.
“So now… is there no way? Is there a way to find out who he gave the mirror’s heart to?”
“Difficult,” Maha said. “The Yata Mirror contains the magical power of the great goddess Amaterasu. In terms of divine rank, it’s on the same level as my mother. If I want to trace it, I must first establish a spiritual connection with the Yata Mirror. This is difficult.”
Aida panted for a long while, then looked back at the two disciples. They looked even more ashen-faced than him.
“…Please allow me to go and discuss this with the disciples of the school for a moment.” Aida turned and bowed deeply to Maha, his voice trembling. “I will be right back. Please wait a moment, Your Highness.”
Maha gave him an indifferent look.
Aida was self-willed and had nothing to discuss with his disciples. He was only temporarily retreating to think about how to persuade Maha to spend great effort to help him find the Yata Mirror, and after persuading him, what heavy price he would have to pay in exchange.
After being sent back to Japan, he used all the resources at his disposal to look up rumors about the Peacock Great Wisdom King and found that he had encountered a textbook example of a tyrannical god. Probably because of his half-demonic bloodline, the Peacock was deeply hostile to everyone except his mother, the Phoenix Wisdom King. He was also jealous by nature, and even because his mother believed in gods and Buddhas too much, he had rushed to the Formless Heaven and swallowed the Buddha’s body in one gulp.
In fact, compared to other deities, the Peacock Great Wisdom King was relatively easy to summon. This was probably because he grew up in the snow mountains and had a relatively strong sense of identity with the human world.
However, since he came to the Esoteric School, the destroyed property and collapsed buildings were nothing. The main thing was that he had simply treated the Esoteric School as a cafeteria!
Aida had previously prepared eighty-eight living human sacrifices for him—people bought from the black market and smuggled from overseas. But for some reason, Maha just wouldn’t eat what was prepared for him. Instead, he ate whatever he wanted at every meal. If he found a Esoteric School disciple pleasing to the eye, he would grab them and eat them raw on the spot, without a second thought, leaving a mess of blood and remains before wiping his mouth and walking away.
Last week, after he had eaten several Vajrayana elders, Aida was finally forced under the strong pressure of the elders to negotiate with Maha, asking him not to eat Japanese people anymore.
However, for Maha, there was no difference between Japanese and non-Japanese people, only the difference between looking delicious and not delicious. Aida’s words immediately angered Maha. The irritable Peacock Great Wisdom King almost disemboweled and gouged out Aida’s heart on the spot. Aida had to use all his strength to escape. Afterward, he had to offer a large number of sacrifices to barely appease the Peacock Great Wisdom King’s anger.
Now the situation was even more difficult. How could he persuade this notorious evil god to track the heart of the Yata-no-Kagami for the Esoteric School?
Maha could roughly guess the Japanese’s dilemma, but he didn’t care. The Peacock Wisdom King sat bored on the altar. With a few crackles and bangs, Candy Crush once again showed Game Failed.
Maha crushed the phone into a ball of scrap metal, tossed it aside, and habitually asked Aida for a new phone, then suddenly remembered Aida wasn’t there.
The grand hall was empty. The candlelight flickered with a golden light around the magnificent altar.
Beside the white jade platform, the demon buried its head deep in its chest, afraid that with one careless move, its thousand-year-old self would become the Peacock Wisdom King’s occasional after-dinner snack for a change of taste.
Maha couldn’t help but feel bored. He looked around casually, and his gaze suddenly fell on the unconscious Yan Lanyu.
In the flickering candlelight, Yan Lanyu’s eyes were tightly closed, his breathing steady, like a quiet doll.
“…Hmm.”
Maha had been eating people with great satisfaction recently, so his first reaction to seeing a person was no longer to eat them. On the contrary, he rarely felt playful. Seeing that Yan Lanyu’s cheek was as white as jade in the candlelight, he poked him hard in the face.
Outside the grand hall, Zhou Hui whispered, “What are you waiting for? Just go in, KO Maha, grab the person, and run.”
But Chu He held him back. “No, no… wait.”
On the altar, Maha blinked, seeming to find the soft, elastic texture a bit fun.
He started poking, sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes light, sometimes heavy. After a dozen or so pokes, one side of Yan Lanyu’s face was red, like a ripe apple.
Maha was greatly amused. With a flash of inspiration, he sat down on the white jade platform with his legs apart and began to braid Yan Lanyu’s hair.
Zhou Hui: “…”
Chu He: “…”
The couple was as if struck by lightning. Zhou Hui trembled and said, “What’s going on? Does this kid have some special hobby? Is he playing with a real-life BJD doll?!”
Chu He had a look of a new world being opened up to him. He was stunned for a long time before he came to his senses. “No… felines play with their prey before eating. It should be a habit inherited from you… right… wait!”
Zhou Hui got up to rush in, but was grabbed by Chu He again.
At the same time, the side door of the grand hall creaked open. Aida and his trusted disciples walked in and bowed respectfully to Maha. “Your Highness Ming Wang, is there any way to temporarily awaken Yan Lanyu so we can force him to tell us the whereabouts of the mirror’s heart?”
After saying this, he looked up and finally saw clearly what Maha was doing. His expression was suddenly a little dazed.
“Can’t do it,” Maha said nonchalantly amidst everyone’s shocked gazes, without any sense of inappropriateness.
“Ho-how…”
“He wrapped a large part of his yang world soul around the mirror’s heart and gave it to someone, leaving only a small part of his yang world soul and his complete yin world soul to support his daily activities. The advantage of doing this is that it protects the mirror’s heart to the greatest extent and prevents the receiver from rejecting it. At the same time, it doesn’t have much effect on him either. The bit of yang world soul he left is enough for daily life.”
Maha paused, looked at his work from left to right with an appreciative gaze, probably thinking the little braid on top of Yan Lanyu’s head wasn’t very beautiful, so he undid it and re-braided one at the back of his head.
“But the problem is, the demon is strongly yin-natured—when the demon possessed this little brother’s body, it strongly corroded the little bit of yang world soul he had left, which is why he’s unconscious now. Without a soul, of course he can’t be woken up.”
Aida couldn’t even be bothered to look at Maha’s shocking behavior anymore and asked anxiously, “But isn’t there still a yin world soul?”
“Have some common sense, will you? The yin world soul is the soul of the dead. It’s normally in a chaotic state. And the yin world soul has suffered through the mountain of knives and sea of fire in hell. If it’s forcibly awakened, it’s equivalent to—”
Maha’s voice suddenly paused. He stood up and took half a step back.
At first, Aida didn’t react. Then, looking past Maha’s figure, he was stunned to find that on the white jade platform, Yan Lanyu’s arm was twitching.
The frequency of his body’s twitching became more and more violent, almost to the point of a spasm. Several blue veins bulged from his skin, and then, like living snakes, they snaked under his skin, spreading all the way to his face.
His eyes were tightly closed, his face spasming, his whole body arched as if in extreme pain, letting out gasping sounds.
“What’s going on?” Aida said in amazement.
Yan Lanyu gripped the edge of the white jade platform tightly, his knuckles making a terrible cracking sound. His body sat up inch by inch, his face contorting in agony, looking very ferocious in the flickering, uncertain shadows of the candlelight.
“Heh… heh…”
He fell to the ground with a thud, then staggered to his feet, his blood-red eyes open.
Maha dodged to the side and said calmly, “…equivalent to a fierce ghost returning to life.”
In the next second, Yan Lanyu rushed down from the altar, brushed past Maha, and charged straight at Aida, knocking him to the ground!
Aida roared, and the disciples rushed up to grab Yan Lanyu, but it was completely useless. Yan Lanyu let out a sharp, chilling roar, and with a vicious swipe, he tore off a piece of flesh from Aida Yoshihide’s chest, along with fragments of his clothes!
Aida let out a pained cry of astonishment, and the disciples all exclaimed and roared in anger!
A mournful whistle came from the empty grand hall, as if a cold wind was sweeping in from all directions, carrying the stench of blood and decay, like countless resentful souls screaming into everyone’s ears.
“It’s… it’s ghosts,” a disciple trembled. “It’s all ghosts!”
In that moment, it was extremely chaotic. Aida and Yan Lanyu struggled with all their might. The former’s face was covered in blood, looking exceptionally ferocious. The latter, as if possessed by a fierce ghost, let out a mournful roar, his nails digging deep into the flesh of Aida’s neck.
The Esoteric School disciples waved their hands and feet, trying to disperse the endless stream of ghosts in the void, while also pouncing to grab Yan Lanyu. But the first one to rush up hadn’t even gotten close before Yan Lanyu grabbed his hand and snapped his wrist with a crack!
The disciple let out a deafening scream. Aida took the opportunity to grab a talisman from the void, which lit up with a faint blue flame amidst his roar, and slapped it on Yan Lanyu’s forehead.
However, Yan Lanyu then tore off the talisman and, as if enraged, bit off a piece of flesh from the disciple’s broken hand!
“What’s going on!” Aida’s voice changed. “Your Highness! Your Highness Ming Wang!”
Maha thoughtfully stroked his chin and said faintly, “So this is the yin world soul… How did you Esoteric School refine it? Why is the resentment so strong?”
“Your Highness!”
“Strange, why did it suddenly wake up? Was it summoned by my boundless magical power?”
“—Your Highness!”
Aida’s voice barely sounded human anymore. He threw a handful of flaming talismans with all his might, but Yan Lanyu then grabbed them with his bloody hands, balled them up, stuffed them into his mouth, and swallowed them!
The disciples were almost completely stunned. One of them nearly knelt on the ground on the spot!
“But you should also examine yourself. You see, he’s not looking for anyone else but you. This shows it’s still your problem.” Maha commented very rationally and objectively, then pushed a square black frame out of the air with both hands, which floated toward Yan Lanyu.
The black frame rapidly enlarged, like a bottomless black pocket, and tried to envelop Yan Lanyu.
—That was actually one of Maha’s special spaces, a void independent of the six realms, dark and empty inside.
His original intention was just to have the yin world soul stay inside for a while, and then find a way to knock Yan Lanyu unconscious again. However, for some reason, Yan Lanyu suddenly erupted with unimaginable explosive force, directly grabbing the edge of the spatial rift and letting out an angry, sharp scream!
The Esoteric School disciples staggered back, and blood burst from Aida’s ears.
That sound did not come from Yan Lanyu alone, but was a ghostly wail that resonated in the ten thousand voids, full of resentment, unwillingness, anger, and pain!
Maha’s gaze suddenly looked straight out of the hall, and he said softly, “—Not good.”
No one noticed what he said, but just as his voice fell, the ground suddenly shook.
A hurricane-like airflow descended from the sky, and a loud noise like a tidal wave came, like thousands of horses and soldiers galloping.
The roof of the shrine gradually began to emit the sound of the load-bearing structure being compressed. The walls trembled, and dust and rubble fell.
—On the steps outside the main gate, Zhou Hui looked up at the sky and, after a long moment, said incredulously, “This… what on earth is this?”
The giant dragon coiled in the void opened its eyes. Its two vertical pupils were blood-red, and a third eye on its forehead emitted a demonic halo.
It slowly moved its mountain-like body, and every inch of its movement stirred up a foul, strong wind. Then its huge dragon claws descended from the sky, the airflow like a mountain torrent, instantly bending a row of pine trees around the shrine!
Chu He slipped with a bang and was immediately held by Zhou Hui, who pulled him into his arms.
The dragon’s body was like a rolling dark cloud. Its head was held high, its three vertical pupils reflecting a chilling red light, like three strange red lanterns in the night sky.
“—It’s resonating with Yan Lanyu’s soul!” Chu He shouted into Zhou Hui’s ear. “Little brother Yan’s screams have awakened it!”
Zhou Hui cursed, “What the hell is this! The Esoteric School is raising this kind of thing. Aren’t they afraid of genocide in Japan?!”
Chu He was about to say something when the paulownia wood door of the grand hall was thrown open with a bang, and Maha rushed out like lightning.
By now, it was too late for his parents to avoid him. The two groups almost collided face-to-face. Maha and Zhou Hui both stared wide-eyed at each other. “You—”
Chu He said sharply, “Be careful!”
With a deafening boom, the dragon’s body rolled over like a bulldozer, rushing straight toward the grand hall amidst a rain of falling branches and snow, instantly knocking all three of them to the ground.
“What are you doing?! What is this thing?!” Zhou Hui was extremely depressed. He grabbed Maha’s collar and asked sharply, “You brought it out of the sea of blood, didn’t you?!”
Maha’s answer was a clang of a sword. In a flash of lightning, Zhou Hui drew his saber from the void to block it. The clash of blades created a dazzling spark of electricity!
“It has nothing to do with me. I just came to eat a few people casually—as for that dragon, it’s the transformed form of a living person who has entered demonhood. Human eyes can’t see it.”
The corner of the Peacock Wisdom King’s mouth curled up. In the stalemate, the blade reflected a cold light, showing the cruel, bloodthirsty smile on his lips. “That’s the demonized Ninigi-no-Mikoto, the current headmaster of the Esoteric School. So I don’t care if these humans live or die. It’s their own mess anyway.”
